Mest opened his eyes.

  A grey-white light drifted through the windows in slow waves, its rays breaking upon motes of dust that drifted as though time itself had slowed. The hearth lay cold, its bed covered in pale ash.

  Behind the counter, Hobb was polishing a stone with his rag.

  “Everyone has gone,” he said dully. “The inn is already closed. Though I have not opened it yet.”

  Mest looked about the abandoned, ageing hall.

  Thick cobwebs shrouded the furniture. Some of the pictures hung crooked upon the walls; others had long since fallen and lay where they had struck. The trophies were crusted with grime, the matted fur hardened and lifeless.

  The arm of the chair creaked beneath his weight as he rose with effort. The fur where his arm had once rested had worn entirely away.

  As he walked slowly towards the counter, the dried planks groaned beneath his steps like something ancient shifting in its sleep. He sat opposite Hobb.

  “The usual, please.”

  “Of course. At once.”

  Instead of a mug, his friend placed the familiar worn sack upon the counter. The wood cracked beneath its weight.

  “It costs rather a lot,” Hobb said, his voice low and stripped of hope. He continued polishing the stone. “I suppose I shall not see you again for years. I was just thinking I shall have to raise my prices. Still, I will try to arrange it so that yours is always only slightly more. We are old acquaintances, after all. I know they are not so generous with you elsewhere. Not in exchange for silence.”

  “It already takes long enough to gather a sackful,” Mest said, his mouth tightening faintly. “Next time it will take a decade.”

  He searched his purse.

  “Could you not ask less? I have not a single copper. And even what little I manage to collect costs too much sacrifice. I must stay away longer and longer, and I arrive nowhere in time.”

  He drew out a worn silver coin.

  It crumbled to dust between his fingers.

  “I would settle,” he said quietly.

  Hobb waved the rag dismissively.

  “That is not your style.”

  The waves of light grew dimmer.

  The pillars that held the ceiling dried further and further until they split with sharp cracks. Thicker dust gathered upon the tables. A cold emptiness spread through the air.

  Hobb sighed and set the stone upon the counter.

  It burned with a white flame.

  “As with all things of worth, these too require depth,” he said. “One must descend for them. The darkness must be dispersed by something. The shadows.”

  He looked at Mest.

  “You chose this. Though you cannot remain anywhere long.”

  The door to the yard creaked open.

  Beyond it yawned a rotting hollow. Within, dense, tangled roots exhaled a heavy stench of decay. Their bark-like surface parted, and Anne stepped through.

  She walked to her father’s side with her head bowed. In her hand lay a small bird, burnt to charcoal, ash smeared crimson across her fingers.

  “Only small things can pass through here,” she said. “Nothing larger. But I am small anyway.”

  The bird flared suddenly into flame.

  A blood-freezing shriek echoed through the hall as it burned.

  “I do not know this side of you,” Anne continued softly. “But I still know you are a good man.”

  Hobb was studying a yellowed sheet of paper. Hobb was studying a yellowed sheet of paper. Distorted glyphs and tangled diagrams flowed across it, bleeding into one another.

  Without warning the page slipped from his hand.

  When it struck the floor it shattered with a sharp, crystalline chime, as though it had fallen in fragments.

  Anne raised her pale blue gaze to Mest. Her eyes were glassy.

  “What if one day we need you?” she asked. “Hundreds of years have passed. I stopped counting somewhere near forty. And now there are three of us.”

  She paused.

  “Will you tell me a story? You will come more often now, will you not?”

  The inn’s front door opened.

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  Outside, the forest pulsed faintly, as though breathing. Light flickered through it in slow, rhythmic throbs.

  A tall, slender figure stepped inside.

  He wore a dark, hooded robe. His right arm was wrapped in torn cloth; his hands burned black, still faintly smouldering. His face could not be seen.

  He pointed at the sack.

  “You know your kind could be wiped out for this,” he said.

  He seated himself at a table without ever removing his gaze from Mest. At his side a blood-streaked sword glowed with a dull, steady light.

  “You will never be rid of that sack. You did not come more often. You did not come in time. You never stayed. And you never will.”

  Mest looked back without blinking.

  “I could reveal your little secret,” he replied quietly, “and then it would end swiftly. For both of us. Or would you prefer to remove the bracer yourself?”

  A faint grimace crossed his face.

  “You are no better.”

  He turned away.

  “We have not seen one another in some time. It would be best if that remained so. Go and burn and kill in the plane of twilight from which you crawled.”

  From the ceiling thin streams of water began to fall. They spread slowly across the floor.

  Beneath the growing sheet no planks could be seen—only endless, hollow darkness.

  Suddenly black shapes began striking the frozen surface from below. Each blow bent it inward, and the floor seemed to pour into the air itself.

  Mest shuddered.

  He seized his sack and hurried out of the inn.

  The porch groaned beneath his steps, rotten and hollow. The forest beyond was drained of colour; the ground beneath it lay hard and frozen. A motionless fog hovered between the grey trunks.

  The deeper he looked, the more the distance gaped open—cold and ravine-like. He felt himself falling towards it.

  His body jerked.

  He grasped at nothing.

  “Here it says you will never escape from there, no matter how often you enter,” Hobb’s voice called behind him.

  He stood clutching a trembling sheet of paper.

  “What do you suppose that means…?”

  Above, silver clouds drifted. Behind them pale, cold light gleamed. The faint sun and moon moved slowly towards one another—then merged.

  “You see, Mest,” Hobb continued mildly, “here at least day is day and night is night. But for you it makes no difference, does it?”

  Overhead the merged celestial body pulsed, pallid and dreadful.

  “You spend so much time in the fresh air. That is why you remain young—even when time itself no longer exists.”

  He tucked the rag into his sword-belt.

  “My wandering in this life is finished.”

  In the distant forest, beyond the trees, a vast grey figure strode soundlessly.

  It nearly blended with the dim sky.

  Its body was human, yet its head resembled that of a stag or perhaps a goat, though elongated, grotesque. Its antlers slanted crookedly. Its black eyes shone without life, and it seemed at once to look in every direction.

  Mest felt that if he moved, it would notice him.

  And if it noticed him, it would turn its head towards him.

  A piercing whine split through his consciousness. He clutched at his ear.

  “A storm is coming,” said Omba.

  A sudden, bizarre sensation came over Mest. He shuddered, then slowly turned his head.

  The dwarf crouched at the far end of the porch, coaxing a small fire to life with a charred bone.

  “It is warm and cold at the same time,” Omba said thoughtfully. “You could be a bit carefree now and then. Or at least friendlier. You may even mock my name—though I might grow angry.”

  The small flame flared.

  “That is how it is done—not with your hand. Do not worry. I shall keep watch. You may sleep with your eyes closed.”

  He took four great swallows from his cup and growled contentedly.

  “Life is as it is. No need to let it ache in your head. One must simply drink enough alongside it.”

  Jasu stood nearby, staring bleakly at the single silver coin in his hand.

  “They took my sister,” he said hoarsely. “Then why may I not drink for free?”

  He flung the coin away.

  When it struck the ground, it vanished, sending only a dull ripple across the colourless expanse.

  The forest fell apart without a sound.

  The trees collapsed into dry fragments and drifted away as dust upon a wind that could not be felt.

  Beyond them stretched a burnt wasteland, fading into the horizon. In the distance, vast whirlwinds rose like black pillars from the ashes of dead trees, climbing into a sky the colour of deep blood.

  Some remained seated in their chairs, calmly watching the approaching storm.

  Only one man screamed at the top of his lungs.

  “Strange things, these,” Omba murmured, gazing into the distance. “Most observe the world’s ruin from the comfort of their seats, yet still they do not believe it. In truth, no one truly cares.”

  He stirred the embers with the charred bone.

  “And yet you know better than any of them: The thing children fear beneath their beds, waiting in the dark, is out there somewhere in the wilderness.”

  The sky roared.

  The sound shook the earth itself.

  As though nature’s ancient, elemental fury—slumbering for millennia—had burst to the surface, night-black clouds tore from nothingness and towered into immeasurable heights. Blinding white lightning ripped between them. Gradually the world sank into colourless twilight.

  From the black vortex of the storm a floating mountain began to emerge.

  It drifted impossibly far, yet filled nearly the whole sky. Its jagged peaks pointed both toward the earth below and into the void above.

  From the stone-hardened ground below, distorted spikes and skewered shafts burst forth with shrieking cracks. Among them, cries echoed backward, chilling the soul, as though time itself had reversed.

  From the otherworldly colossus a black shadow approached.

  At first it was barely visible.

  Then, with every heartbeat, it grew larger.

  Its two sides began to undulate like mirrored reflections.

  Dust rose around Mest in a spiralling vortex. Instinctively he lifted his arms before his face.

  When he looked again, his breath caught.

  Vast, bat-like wings beat the air around him, black sails sweeping closer and closer until the nightmare landscape was swallowed in absolute darkness.

  Only a single lantern flame flickered above the inn door.

  It burned in the middle of nothingness.

  Only a few steps away.

  Unreachably distant.

  The cold breath of endless depth touched Mest’s face.

  The ground vanished beneath his feet.

  His whole body convulsed.

  For an instant he felt himself falling.

  Yet the lantern still swayed in the same place.

  He understood then:

  He no longer stood upon earth, but upon shadows.

  And shadows could swallow him like water at any careless step.

  His breath tightened in his chest as fear closed around him.

  Then someone took his hand.

  The unseen figure pulled him forward, guiding him across the void.

  When his steps sounded softly upon the porch, the grip dissolved from his fingers.

  Suddenly something began pounding against the inn door—from within.

  An immense force.

  Mest’s blood froze in his veins.

  “What is the matter?” Hobb asked calmly. “You have been searching for him all along, have you not? I think we should let him in.”

  He opened the door.

  Behind it stretched a narrow corridor, vanishing into infinity.

  A dark figure approached in the black light of torches.

  Its human-like body and elongated head were cast in shadow; twisted antlers scraped along the walls with an ear-splitting rasp. At the end of its long face a narrow jaw protruded forward, and when it opened its mouth, thin skin stretched tight across its muzzle.

  As though a heavy iron gate had swung open deep within a sealed abyss, the creature’s scream tore down the corridor.

  With each motion its limbs jerked and contorted violently as it advanced towards Mest. With every hollow strike of its hooves it drew impossibly nearer.

  It crossed the threshold with a thunderous step.

  Its lifeless, night-black eyes gleamed a breath’s width from Mest’s face.

  Within his skull, he heard the sound of jaws tearing into flesh.

  Hobb placed a hand upon his shoulder.

  “He is the one who takes people away.”